Kings of Leon bring 'Mechanical Bull' tour to Mansfield

Saturday night at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield the Kings of Leon appeared to be in vintage form, throughout their 100-minute show, and vocalist Caleb Followill has never sung better.

On their way home from the performance, however, someone stepped in front of their bus, causing it to stop short, and drummer Nathan Followill was banged up. He's OK, but the band cancelled its show Sunday night in Saratoga Springs, New York.

The Kings are still kind of on the comeback trail, notwithstanding that their latest album, "Mechanical Bull" has been out almost a year now. But the Tennessee quartet had been far out of the limelight since the summer of 2011, when lead singer/guitarist Caleb Followill left the stage--mid-concert-- after a mumbly, disjointed performance in Dallas that gave everyone the impression he was drunk. Subsequently the band cancelled its tour and took time off the road.

Caleb Followill dealt with his problems, and the band, which in addition to Nathan includes their brother Nathan Jared on bass and cousin Matthew Followill on lead guitar, got back into the studio as soon as possible. "Mechanical Bull" was produced by Angelo Petraglia, who has produced their last few albums, has helped with their songwriting from the start, and is a former Bostonian. (In his own rock heyday, Petraglia played in Boston's Face to Face, and then fronted an alternative country band around Beantown in the 1980s called The Immortals, before relocating to Nashville and working with a long list of Music City's top performers.)

On their live dates the family foursome is augmented by multi-instrumentalist Christopher Coleman on percussion, guitar, keyboards and so on. In the studio, Petraglia usually helps out by playing a variety of instruments, as he does on "Mechanical Bull."

The good news, after Saturday night's 22-song concert at The Xfinity Center in Mansfield, is that Caleb Followill looked healthy and in terrific shape, and his singing has never sounded musically better or more focused. It's still not easy to decipher all the words amid the typically steaming alternative/Southern blues-rock the group is playing, but Caleb's voice seemed particularly soulful Saturday, and contained nuances and shadings that really enhanced the songs.

All of the Kings of Leon's song are credited to the whole band, but the lyrics tend to be metaphorical, albeit simple imagery open to limited interpretations. They're basically writing about relationships, love and sex and breakups and searching for happiness, and if some lines are pretty direct, many others are mysteriously vague and impressionistic. In many cases, the songs are aimed at creating a mood, reliving a moment, painting a picture of a person or incident, and the details are purposefully rather indistinct. That often makes them more universal, as the fans can read into them what they want, but having Caleb's vocals deliver such enhanced emotional content like he did Saturday vastly improves the overall effect.

Page 2 of 3 - This year's tour dates have seen the Kings of Leon setlists including about half the latest album, and Saturday night in Mansfield fell right into that category, and the newer songs fit in well with selections from the band's five previous albums. In general the Mansfield setlist was very much in line with the sets on this tour, although some of the order was changed, and the Boston-area crowd got a special cover, as the Kings paid tribute to one of their big influences, The Pixies, with "Where Is My Mind?"

But perhaps the most surprising thing was that the Xfinity Center wasn't close to sold out, for a tour that seemed to generate a lot of buzz. In the last few weeks, for instance, The Kongos, who opened the night, have seen their new album pop into the Billboard Top Forty chart, even as it is also featured, at a sale price, in your friendly big box stores. The second band up was Young the Giant, one of those appealing acts that seems perpetually on the verge of breaking out of cult status. Yet the Kongos lively half-hour set at 7 p.m. was played before about 3000 people, while Young the Giant's 45-minute middle set probably doubled that. The crowd did seem to increase around the time of the headliner's starting time, but the throng likely peaked around 12,000, although they were, to be sure, excited and giddy to be there. Caleb noted Saturday's audience was the best of the tour so far, and for once that didn't seem like the typical 'we love you Boston' hype.

"Family Tree" was one of the highpoints of the first hour, a visceral rocker with a good hook, and a repetitive drum crescendo that kept the intensity level high. The plaintive tone of "Tonight," from the last album, gave Caleb a chance to show his seemingly enhanced vocal range and power, making it even more compelling. There was a tangible emotional pull to "Back Down South," the wistful tune that gradually built from soft ballad to rousing rocker.

If many of the quartet's songs seemed to inhabit a midtempo, simmering-but-not-boiling kind of groove, the last 45 minutes or so were full of fire. That Pixies' cover certainly got things rocking, with a garage-rock feel emphasized by the sheets of guitar chords Caleb and Matthew Followill were playing. The big dynamics of their old "Molly's Chambers" continued in that vein of gloriously over-the-top guitar work. The punk-rock rhythms of "Temple," with a backing of whipsaw guitars, and then a spacey, phase-shifter guitar solo by Matthew, really upped the ante. That punky adrenalin rush kept going through a heated "Didn't Matter."

Downshifting just a bit, "Beautiful War" from the latest album, which portrays love affairs in general, was a heady mix of jangling, Byrds-like guitar textures, with the patented Kings of Leon thump underneath it. And it was a very nice moment when the band quieted down, allowing the crowd to sing the chorus back to them. Caleb requested cell phones or lighters aloft for the bittersweet ballad "Cold Desert," and was rewarded with a sea of thousands of them, as glitter shot out over the first 20 rows and hung in the air, for an even more surreal effect.

Page 3 of 3 - The main set ended with a poignant run through "Use Somebody," with Caleb starting the song solo on guitar, and then having the band kick in behind him. The encores blasted off with smoke and lasers piercing the air during a galvanizing version of "Crawl," which evolved into a wild guitar rave-up. The irresistible groove and catharsis of "Sex on Fire," their 2008 hit, ended the night in a blaze of sensual delight, the 12,000 fans still yelping and churning at full bore.

Earlier, Young the Giant's set proved they have an appealing style of their own, an art-rock amalgam that ranges from jazzy tones to crunching guitars. But probably a third of their set was hampered by having the low end far too loud in the mix, producing a nasty hum--it shouldn't have been a surprise since it was happening when their roadies sound-checked the instruments before their set. The hard-and-fast rock muscle of "It's About Time" was a treat anyway, "The Reason Why" boasted lovely shimmering guitars, and "Crystallized" was just the kind of potent rocker this crowd had come to hear.

The Kongos, who noted they are a quartet of South African brothers now based in Phoenix, surely won even more fans with their opening half-hour set, as their lineup skillfully contrasts guitar with accordion, and adds those intriguing South African rhythms. In some places you were reminded of Paul Simon's "Graceland" for the way those rhythms provided a fresh feel for their guitar-rock, and in other spots Kongos evoked memories of the 1980-90s folk-rock band The Hooters. The marching beat, surging accordion, and slide guitar behind their minor hit "Come With Me Now" made it an electric moment, even with the arena only a third full, and it's safe to say we'll be hearing a lot more from The Kongos.